The company

DICK’S Sporting Goods creates confidence and excitement by inspiring, supporting, and personally equipping all athletes to achieve their dreams. Founded in 1948 and headquartered in Pittsburgh, the leading omnichannel retailer serves athletes and outdoor enthusiasts in more than 850 DICK’S Sporting Goods, Golf Galaxy, Public Lands, Moosejaw, Going Going Gone! and Warehouse Sale stores, online, and through the DICK’S mobile app. DICK’S also owns and operates DICK’S House of Sport and Golf Galaxy Performance Center, as well as GameChanger, a youth sports mobile platform for live streaming, scheduling, communications, and scorekeeping.

The challenge

The company relaunched both its DICK’S and Golf Galaxy apps in 2021. Post-launch, DICK’S product team was tasked with integrating the mobile and in-store shopping experiences.

DICK’S was looking for a partner to help develop its new Store Mode feature. The product team needed robust, developer-friendly location infrastructure that could provide the observability and analytics required to instill confidence in their solution and launch quickly. By selecting Radar, they also found an extensible platform and strategic partner to help them deploy increasingly innovative and frictionless omni-channel athlete experiences over time.

The solution

During scoping, DICK’S used Radar to understand how athletes were using the app in-store. Within a single sprint, DICK’S installed the Radar SDK, imported store geofences, and started generating events for analysis. The team was surprised to find that nearly 20% of app opens occurred within DICK’S locations, completely unprompted. This insight validated the opportunity to drive incremental engagement by providing greater utility and value to athletes in-store.

When Radar detects that an athlete has opened the app within a DICK’S store, the app surfaces Store Mode, which allows athletes to easily:

• Scan product barcodes for additional product information
• Find products at their current store and unlock free shipping if a product is unavailable
• Scan their ScoreCard barcode to earn loyalty points at checkout
• Access their favorites, rewards, and active offers

DICK’S now uses Radar to personalize the in-store app experience. Functioning as a digital shopping companion, the app conveniently surfaces features that complement the in-store experience to increase athlete satisfaction, drive purchases, and build loyalty.

The results

Using Radar, DICK’S was able to develop, test, and deploy Store Mode to over 780 locations in its final sprint before the 2022 holiday season. Within the first few months of the launch, over 70% of app users had granted location permissions, and 8% of the company’s total user base had used Store Mode, representing hundreds of thousands of omni-channel shopping experiences.

Omni-channel athletes are some of DICK’S’ most valuable, spending over 2x single channel athletes, and DICK’S has found that a vast majority of Store Mode orders are shipped to the athlete’s home. Store Mode not only functions as a one-time save the sale strategy, but also increases the potential lifetime value of an athlete by facilitating omni-channel purchases.